3 Legendary Design Decks Every Presenter Should Read

March 27, 2015

Business presentations have come a long way: Gone are the days of bullet points and stock photos. If you want to succeed as a presenter today, you must get visual. You never saw Steve Jobs presenting any of those PowerPoint templates, now did you?

Whether you're new to design or a pro, we can all be inspired and improve upon our presentations. Design firm Empowered Presentationsshared with us what they consider to be the 3 best decks on presentation design.

Advice from Seth Godin: Avoiding “Really Bad PowerPoint”

This deck combats the notion that presentations are inherently a negative experience. “The deck caught our attention right away with the opening slide with Seth Godin’s face and of course the catchy title,” says Empowered Presentations’ co-founder Yancey Unequivocally. “What also made it appealing is that the content was easily digestible and simple. The moment that you cause someone to scratch their head and think about what you are wanting to convey with your content is the moment you lost them. Keeping it simple is the best way to win over audiences, not by making them feel inadequate.”

When the NSA slides leaked, designer Emiland De Cubber took a creative stab and redesigned the top-secret slides. “Emiland cleverly recreated the ‘death by Powerpoint’ slides into a fun, witty, yet professional look and feel,” Unequivocally says. The deck is a great example of how to bring staid presentations into the new age of design.

This deck gives a direct explanation for why your PowerPoint didn’t turn out well: “It’s not the program that sucks, it’s you.” “Right off the bat, the title slide can be taken into offense, and immediately you question it and say to yourself, ‘No I do not, how dare he?!' -- which causes you to click through the remaining 61 slides that build the case that maybe you really do suck and just don’t know it,” Unequivocally says. “Using bold fonts and great contrasting color palettes make this deck stand out from many others who also try to prove the same point.”